Syria Buys Dell PCs Despite Sanctions 72
puddingebola writes with a New York Times article about how mundane PC equipment — not just more esoteric and eyebrow-raising network monitoring equipment from Blue Coat — makes its way to Syria: "Large amounts of computer equipment from Dell have been sold to the Syrian government through a Dubai-based distributor despite strict trade sanctions intended to ban the selling of technology to the regime, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. The disclosure of the computer sales is the latest example of how the Syrian government has managed to acquire technology, some of which is used to censor Internet activity and track opponents of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad."
fences fence. (Score:4, Insightful)
where's the news in that?
and what the fuck does this even have to do with Dell? it's more to do with the Dubai based outfit. Dell might have good reasons to drop them as an official reseller now though, but the whole trade sanction can't work if you can sell to countries which don't adhere to the trade sanction, because they'll buy and fence the goods to their customers - that's what retailers do after all.
and an arab businessman shitting his business associates in another country? TELL IT AIN'T SO!!!! /s.
Why is Syria our problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
The same people http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Perl [wikipedia.org] who sold us on the idea that we had to attack Iraq, because otherwise Saddam Hussein would attack us with chemical weapons, always wanted us to attack Syria next.
The Iraq story turned out to be a lie, and we are now worse off in Iraq, with Islamist and secular militias carving up the country and giving a big slice to al Qaeda and its successors. (Not to mention the 3,000 Americans killed, and forget about the 300,000 or so Iraqis who were killed.)
Assad is running a stable, secular dictatorship that violates human rights. The anti-government forces are sectarian Islamists who will violate human rights even worse, massacre people in the other sects, destroy Syria as a functioning country and turn it into feuding fiefdoms like Iraq.
We ignored the same human rights violations when Assad was our puppet and we wanted to send prisoners to Syria for him to torture. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/19/syria-us-ally-human-rights [guardian.co.uk]
Re:maybe I'm a little off topic (Score:4, Insightful)
but after Egypt, I'm not entirely sure another MB dominated country in the ME is a good outcome for the West.
what say you?
I suspect that the ship has largely sailed on that sort of thing. When you prop up regimes that (while secular and at least semi-docile) provide governance of absolutely dreadful quality, while generally cracking down on civil-society types, that increasingly leaves you with a 'puppet tyrant or religious nutjobs' situation that can be expensive, even impossible, to maintain for the puppet tyrant(y hello there, Iran, we were just talking about you, and I think I see Pakistan heading up the driveway to join us!). It's somewhat similar to all those CIA-backed-Latin-American-Fascists who, once they eventually collapsed, were largely replaced by semi-hostile populist socialists. No shit the locals were looking to change brands after the delightsome performance of their previous government provider.
I'd say that the locals are making a mistake, descending into theocratic insanity tends to put you among the ranks of some really shitty places; but it's not as though secular liberal democracy has been putting on a very impressive show...
Re:Tempest in a teapot. (Score:5, Insightful)
Couldn't the Syrians just buy PCs directly from China?